'They just don't write 'em like they used to" is a familiar complaint. But anybody who says that hasn't heard Mike Craver, the former Red Clay Ramblers pianist. He plays Tuesday at the Church of the Good Shepherd in downtown Raleigh, as part of First Night.
Most of the songs on Craver's third solo album, "Shining Down" (Sapsucker Records), sound like they could be covers dating to the first half of the 20th century. But except for "Rhode Island Is Famous For You" (from the 1948 musical "Inside U.S.A."), all the album's songs are originals of relatively recent vintage.
"I'm very retro," Craver says by phone from his office in Lexington. "When you're growing up and maturing, you can very easily be hypnotized by contemporary culture. When I was a college kid, I was happily hypnotized because there was a lot going on -- there always is. But as I get older, I find myself appreciating things like film classics.
"I'm absolutely riveted by the '20s, '30s and '40s," he adds. "I guess I'm a nostalgia buff. The Red Clay Ramblers were the perfect band for me, and I didn't even know it. When I first met them, they were doing Depression-era songs, and at that point I was thinking that hippie singer-songwriters were the thing. I guess we're always in the right place at the wrong time; or the wrong place at the right time."
Craver spent 13 years with the Ramblers and played on some of the ensemble's most notable projects, including the definitive 1985 Sam Shepard collaboration "A Lie of the Mind." Craver left the Ramblers the following year to pursue a theatrical career, writing and performing such critical favorites as 1994's "Radio Gals" and 1998's "Bosh & Moonshine."
Six of the 14 songs on "Shining Down" were written for those two productions, including the sly George Gershwin homage, "Dear Mr. Gershwin." Other songs were inspired by Craver's mother's writings about growing up in small-town North Carolina. Still others came from journals Craver kept while touring with the Ramblers -- such as "Kalamazoo," written about an encounter with a metal band on the road. Despite its disparate sources, "Shining Down" hangs together surprisingly well.
"Right now, I'm really enjoying just playing music as opposed to theater, which is very different," Craver says. "When you do theater stuff, you tend to go someplace and stay a while because it's hard to do theater one-nighters. But with a band or solo act on the road, it's a lot more gritty and you encounter much more of the real world. Theater is more of a controlled environment. Touring is kinda like everything but the kitchen sink; you find yourself in these incredibly impossible places where you only stay for a little while.
"If you're lucky."
INDEPENDENT WEEKLY (Nov. 6, 2002): When Mike Craver calls Shining Down "a collection of odds and ends from my tune trunk," you can imagine he actually owns one: battered from travel, covered with decals from Paris and Rome, and possessing a built-in minibar for those long nights in distant hotel rooms. Resplendent in a purple paisley tux, maroon tie and white carnation, brimming with jaunty good will, Craver knows the role he's playing and fills it happily. That he apes Cole Porter and George Gerswhin--to the point of incorporating a slice of "Rhapsody in Blue" into a tune called "Dear Mister Gerswhin"--should come as no surprise to fans of his early work with the Red Clay Ramblers. Craver has always tended toward the theatrical, later finding his niche in a series of successful musicals.
On Shining Down, a parade of offbeat characters is treading the boards: "That Wicky Wacky Hula Hula Honka Wonka Honolulu Hawaiian Honey of Mine" comes from Radio Gals (his musical about an all-girl radio station in the 1920s). The recipient of an equine mail-order bride, whose "nose was an organ of singular strength, as renowned for its width as it was for its length," is a character from "Bosh and Moonshine," (his show about an Old West music hall). The CD's title track is sung from the points of view of four High Plains characters: a gunslinger, a Shakespearean actor, an undertaker, and a dance hall girl. And the namesake of "Diamond Lil" is a short order cook from Pennsylvania with a knack for pyromania.
There's pure sentiment, too, in a cover of "Rhode Island is Famous for You," from the 1948 musical, Inside U.S.A., and in original numbers like "Everyone's Gone to the Moon." People don't write music and wordplay like this anymore, but Craver does, with tremendous affection.
In this regard, he's only doing with a piano what revivalists like the early Ramblers did with fiddles and banjos: recreating the feel and sound of an era he loves, putting his personal stamp on it, and giving us something unique and new that seems vaguely--and wonderfully--familiar. --DAVID POTORTI
*****
DIRTY LINEN (Dec-Jan '03):
Whatever Mike Craver creates might be called, the world needs more of it.
Craver gained a following in folk circles as part of the original Red Clay Ramblers - an impossible-to-peg string band in which Craver usually played piano. He left the group to pursue writing musicals and landed critical acclaim and drama awards with "Oil City Symphony" and "Radio Gals."
His solo albums are deft combinations of old-time country, 19th century parlor music and Cole Porter-style classic pop.
Like Randy Newman or Ray Davies, Craver creates aural portraits and can open up a character's world within the space of three minutes.
Craver's subjects on "Shining Down" include a lovably coarse female music fan named "Diamond Lil," a young man who loses his legs and his soul in the Battle of Argonne Forest and a 1920s-era woman who realizes that her would-be fiance of 10 years is going to leave her an old maid.
Some of the best tracks, including the title cut, come from Craver's 1998 Old West-themed musical "Bosh and Moonshine."
In the creepily funny "When I Was a Little Wee Babe," gay undertaker Reverend Mould tells of how he went from performing mock funerals for his dolls to opening a business in which repairing bullet holes in real corpses costs a little extra.
In "The Butterfield Stage," a Dodge City resident recounts meeting his mail order bride - a woman who turned out to look a little like a horse and whose teeth "were like stars - they came out at night."
While many of Craver's songs sound sort of idiosyncratically contemporary, Craver is masterful at capturing the sound and feel of past eras. In addition to "The Butterfield Stage" (presented as a jaunty saloon ballad), "That Wicky Wacky Hula Hula Honka Honolulu Honey of Mine," from the musical "Radio Gals," is an original tongue-twisting number that perfectly re-creates the goofiness of the 1920s Hawaiian craze.
Craver provides plenty of laughs, but his songs and his characters have too much heart to be dismissed lightly.
"Shining Down" is a little more piecemeal and less dark than Craver's brilliant 1999 disc, "Wagoner's Lad." However, it's a joy and it seems better with every listen. Grade: A
*****
(I really can't tell if this is a decent review or not but I thought I'd include it for fairness sake. --MC)
Mike Craver was the piano player for the Red Clay Ramblers for many years. In l984 he launced a solo career with a modest album on Flying Fish that didn't seem to do much for his career. After achieving some success with several New York theater productions, he tried his hand once again at recording a solo album. Wagoner's Lad (1999) was an original and intelligent collection of songs, and Shining Down, which basks in a musical style that is more Tin Pan Alley/cabaret than its predecessor is a worthy follow-up. Some of the songs, such as "Dear Mister Gerswhin," are from his musicals (in this case, "Radio Gals"). Other songs, equally literate, mention Tyrone Power, Wittgenstein, and Tom Watson and Alexander Bell. The title song is sung from four points of view: a gunslinger, a Shakespearean actor, an undertaker, and a dance-hall girl. Craver is a good singer and pianist who writes charming songs that evoke an earlier era, both musically and lyrically. (PEC)"CRAVER SHINES WITH WITTY IRREVERENCE AND A STYLISTIC BLEND OF ECLECTIC SOUNDS"
By Wayne Bledsoe, Knoxville News-Sentinel entertainment writer
July 28, 2002